Lehigh Valley students joining call for walkouts, marches and protests to end gun violence

Courtesy of Claire Todaro and Georgia Skuza

Claire Todaro, left, and Georgia Skuza, right, are Lehigh Valley students organizing a walkout to advocate for tougher gun laws after the mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

Claire Todaro, left, and Georgia Skuza, right, are Lehigh Valley students organizing a walkout to advocate for tougher gun laws after the mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla. (Courtesy of Claire Todaro and Georgia Skuza)

Binghui Huang, Katherine ReinhardOf The Morning Call

Parkland High School sophomore Claire Todaro hopes that 3,200 of her classmates will walk out of class on March 14 for 17 minutes — one minute for each person killed by alleged gunman Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.

“After every shooting you see hashtags, and you see ‘thoughts and prayers,’ but how much can thoughts and prayers do? They don’t actively change the law,” Todaro said.

Tough talk by students who lived through last week’s mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., have ignited nationwide plans for marches, sit-ins and walkouts in a collective effort to do what other anti-gun activists have yet to do — get tougher gun laws passed.

Parkland, Liberty in Bethlehem and Nazareth Area are among the high schools in the Lehigh Valley listed as places where people are mobilizing to join the National School Walkout on March 14. Others include North Penn and Central Bucks high schools.

Lehigh Valley students, inspired by the passionate pleas for tougher gun laws from students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, are organizing their classmates and teachers to participate in the walkout.

“Enough is enough,” said Georgia Skuza, a junior at Liberty High School.

Skuza and Todaro both sprung into action when they saw the Women’s March, a grassroots organization that fights for social change, posted a call to action on Twitter. They signed their schools up to participate in the walkout Monday.

The two students organizers have support from their friends and are planning to seek teachers’ support this week.

Students have been criticizing lawmakers who said they doubted tougher gun laws would have prevented alleged shooter Nikolas Cruz from killing 14 students and three staff members. Among those killed were athletic director Chris Hixon, a Pleasant Valley High School graduate whose father Russ Hixon and uncle Dave Hixon live in Easton.

“My message for people in office is: you’re either with us or against us. We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around,” Douglas student Cameron Kasky, who started the #NeverAgain movement, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “We don’t need you.”

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump signaled his support for legislation being introduced by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.

The bill, which is still being worked on, would reinforce the requirement that federal agencies report all criminal infractions to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and create financial incentives for states to do so, too.

Trump also planned a listening session with students on Wednesday. Details of who he would speak with were not available Monday afternoon.

Todaro said she was pessimistic that Trump would change his mind about gun control after talking to students. She was upset when she heard Trump frame the mass shooting as a mental illness problem.

“Mental illness plays a part, but mental illness is world wide. The problem is the fact that people with mental illness can get guns,” Todaro said. “And we have semi-automatic guns that people can buy. I don’t understand the need for semi-automatic guns.”

The teenage organizers said despite mass shootings from Columbine High School to Sandy Hook Elementary School, there has been no significant change to gun law and they want their generation to change that.

“It’s my generation, kids my age, they’re really strong. They mean business. You can see it in their face. You can hear it in their voice.” Skuza said.

At least three major events are being planned so far to draw support to end gun violence.

March 14

Organizers behind Women's March, an anti-Trump and female empowerment protest, called for a 17-minute, nationwide walkout by teachers and students at 10 a.m. on March 14. The 17 minutes would stand for everyone who died at Douglas.

“We need action. Students and allies are organizing the national school walkout to demand Congress pass legislation to keep us safe from gun violence at our schools, on our streets and in our homes and places of worship,” the group said.

Students and staff have the right to teach and learn in an environment free from the worry of being gunned down in their classrooms or on their way home from school.

The group has a spot on actionnetowork.org where you can plug in your ZIP code to find a local march.

Besides Parkland, Liberty and Nazareth Area, a number of schools in Pennsylvania are listed as joining the National School Walkout on March 14. Others include North Penn and Central Bucks high schools.

With many schools off on Monday for President’s Day, it was unclear whether the schools were officially supportive of the effort.

Alan Davis, principal of Nazareth High School, tweeted that the district did not officially register and “had not yet had a plan to discuss this as a district.”

March 24

Kasky has organized March for Our Lives, which will take place in Washington, D.C., on March 24, a Saturday, to demand that “we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today,” according to its website, marchforlives.com

His group is encouraging anyone who can’t go to D.C. to march in your own community. “On March 24, the collective voices of the March For Our Lives movement will be heard,” the group’s website said.

Kasky also is raising $1 million to fund the effort through gofundme. As of Monday afternoon, it had raised $335,000.

“We cannot allow one more child to be shot at school. We cannot allow one more teacher to make a choice to jump in front of a firing assault rifle to save the lives of students,” the website said.

April 20

The Network for Public Education, an advocacy organization for public schools, announced a day of walkouts, sit-ins and other events on school campuses on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado that left 12 students and one teacher dead.

“It is time to let our legislators know that they must stand up to the gun lobby and enact meaningful reform to protect students and staff,” the group said on its website.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

UPDATES:

3:15 p.m. This story has been updated to show that Pennridge High School is not participating in the National School Walkout on March 14.